James Price Dillard
Biographic Data
| ID | 96936 |
|---|---|
| NAME | James Price Dillard |
| GIVEN NAMES | James Price |
| FAMILY NAME | Dillard |
| SIGNATURE | DILLARD J P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Wisconsin–Madison |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8109-1562 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 68 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 756 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 68 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
Shaping Interpersonal Communication About Persuasive Media Campaigns by Inducing Critical Versus Collective Orientations
Individuals process persuasive campaign messages intra- and interpersonally with the goal of either accurately evaluating the advocacy or defending against it. In an experiment, messages that argued for reducing consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages were presented to regular drinkers ( N = 275). They were then forbidden to interact, allowed to interact, or directed to interact by discussion prompts with either a critical or a collective focus.…
Does Character–Audience Matching Increase the Persuasive Impact of Anti-Sugar-Sweetened-Beverage (SSB) Consumption Messages
It is widely believed that persuasion is enhanced by including characters in a message whose features correspond with those of the audience. Matching on gender, age, and ethnicity may be especially appealing because these features are immediately perceivable. We examined the persuasive impact of matching on these variables using a large sample of real-world messages (k = 91) drawn from a single topic/context (messages that advocate for reduced co…
When Visual Communication Backfires
Although many persuasive messages include imagery, relatively little is known about the potential for the visual components to induce reactance. This research examined the effects of three message variations—camera angle (low vs. eye-level), antithesis (vs. thesis) (i.e., the juxtaposition of contrasting images), and facial expression of emotion (anger vs. happiness)—on reactance and subsequent persuasion. Two experiments ( N = 240 and N = 259) u…
The Role of Fatigue in a Campus Covid-19 Safety Behaviors Campaign
Message fatigue is the aversive motivational state that results from excessive exposure to campaign messages or similar information over an extended period of time. When fatigued, individuals become less attentive, less responsive, and more resistant to campaign messages and related information. Thus, understanding the bases and functioning of fatigue in persuasive health campaigns has obvious value. Despite considerable interest in this importan…
Campaign-Induced Interpersonal Communication
Media campaigns produce effects when audience members discuss the campaign messages. Fundamental to the understanding of how talk bridges exposure and effect is a knowledge of its content. However, prior attempts to measure talk content have largely been limited to gross characteristics of the interactions. We argue that advances in this line of research require representing post-exposure talk as campaign-induced interpersonal communication (CIC)…
Campaign-induced interpersonal communication following exposure to strong and weak persuasive messages
Media campaigns can create change in their audiences directly via message exposure and indirectly via conversations about the campaign. An experiment (N = 232) exposed regular consumers of sugar-sweetened beverages to either strong or weak messages that advocated reduced consumption, then allowed conversation or did not. There was evidence of direct media effects in that heavy drinkers who privately judged the messages as effective reported highe…
Persuasive Messages, Social Norms, and Reactance
Efforts by universities to reduce the spread of COVID-19 include health campaigns intended to encourage students to wear masks. While well-intended, these efforts may produce counter-persuasion (e.g., decrease masking) if they are seen as threatening individuals’ freedom to choose. In a rolling cross-sectional study of one university campaign (n = 681), we found that the presence of the campaign did instigate a form of resistance known as reactan…
Spillover effects of anti-sugar-sweetened beverage messages
Talking about Sugar-Sweetened Beverages
Media campaigns may influence audience members directly, via message exposure, or indirectly, via conversations about the campaign. Either process has the potential to produce persuasion or counter-persuasion (i.e., boomerang). A laboratory experiment (N = 297) was conducted in which individuals viewed three anti-sugar-sweetened beverage PSAs under three conditions: Prompt (discussion allowed with instructions to evaluate the effectiveness of the…
Fear of Zika
This study examined the relationship between information seeking and fear during the Zika-induced global health crisis. A longitudinal survey of women in the Southern U.S. (N = 306) was conducted in 2016, beginning just days after the World Health Organization declared Zika a global crisis. The data showed that time 1 fear stimulated information seeking at time 2 and that time 2 information seeking caused fear at time 3. This pattern held regardl…
Feeling Covid-19
News of the pandemic has the potential to produce an array of positive and negative emotions, all of which have potent ramifications for subsequent risk to mental and physical well-being. This project sought to assess (a) the intensity of those emotional responses, (b) whether or not it was possible to identify meaningful clusters of emotional reactions, and (c) what social, personal, and communication indices might discriminate among those clust…
Sweet talk for voters
America faces an obesity epidemic affecting both children and adults – one broadly tied to increased consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs). Since 2012, taxes have been proposed as an effective means of reducing SSB consumption and raising revenue. Such taxes have been the subject of voter referendums and have elicited persuasion campaigns by stakeholder groups interested in their passage or failure. This paper provides a picture of the …
Dynamic goal processes
A longstanding tradition in communication research is that people have goals for communicative encounters. Communication research has evolved to better acknowledge that goals are malleable and can change during interactions. Drawing upon the history of communication goals theorizing and research, we elaborate three properties emerging from the juxtaposition of goals and time. We then explore theoretical accounts of goal change and options for dat…
How Scary Are Threat Appeals? Evaluating the Intensity of Fear in Experimental Research
One long-standing concern holds that much is unknown about the operation of threat appeals because practical and ethical matters preclude the use of seriously frightening messages. This project compared the intensity of fear produced by experimental messages with that produced by adverse events, such as wars and hurricanes. Results showed that threat appeals (k = 80; N = 6,738; Δ = 2.15) have been effective at inducing levels of fear that are on …
Threat Appeals as Multi-Emotion Messages
Threat appeals and persuasion
One of the earliest theories of threat appeals, the drive model, predicts that the fear–persuasion relationship is characterized by an inverted U-curve. Evidence of such a curve has proven elusive, probably because, in reality, there are two curvilinear hypotheses, not one. Existing primary studies and meta-analyses have tested the between-persons version of the inverted U-curve and found it wanting. In contrast, this study reports on a within-pe…
Meta-analytic evidence for the persuasive effect of narratives on beliefs, attitudes, intentions, and behaviors
Although narratives are often credited with the capacity to change opinions, empirical tests of this prediction have produced mixed results. To provide a more precise test of narrative's effect on beliefs, attitudes, intentions, and behaviors, we performed meta-analyses on studies that evaluated narrative's persuasive influence on these outcomes. Results suggested positive relationships between exposure to a narrative and narrative-consistent bel…
International Encyclopedia of Interpersonal Communication
The Effect of Narrative News Format on Empathy for Stigmatized Groups
The primary aim of this study was to evaluate the extent to which news story format (narrative vs. non-narrative) can initiate empathic processes that produce more favorable evaluations of stigmatized groups. Participants ( N = 399) read one of two versions of a story that described health care–related dilemmas for either immigrants, prisoners, or the elderly. Narrative-formatted stories produce more compassion toward the individuals in the story…
A Review and Meta-Analysis of Person-Centered Messages and Social Support Outcomes
The Sage Handbook of Persuasion
Emotion, Motivation, and the Persuasive Effects of Message Framing
This study explored the effects of premessage emotions (happiness, anger, and fear) and chronic levels of motivational system activation (behavioral approach system: BAS, and behavioral inhibition system: BIS) on the processing of gain- and loss-framed persuasive messages. The data showed that emotion functions (approach and avoidance), not valences (positive and negative), predicted emotions' interactions with motivational systems and framed mes…
Impulsivity Partially Mediates the Relationship Between BIS/BAS and Risky Health Behaviors
Several theorists have suggested that impulsivity can be understood as a joint function of the behavioral approach (BAS) and behavioral inhibition systems (BIS). After resolving questions concerning the measurement of impulsivity and BAS, this study examined the relationships among risky health behaviors, impulsivity, BIS, and BAS. Utilizing a sample of undergraduates (N = 904), a structural model was tested in which BAS and BIS predicted impulsi…
The Effects of Mood, Message Framing, and Behavioral Advocacy on Persuasion
Two experimental studies explored the interactive effects of mood, framing, and health behavioral advocacy on persuasion. In Study 1, happy and sad moods were found to activate the behavioral approach system (BAS) and the behavioral inhibition system (BIS), respectively. Assuming similar relationships with action-oriented BAS and restraint-oriented BIS, gain and loss framing and prescriptive and proscriptive health advocacies were predicted to in…
Impulsivity Partially Mediates the Relationship Between BIS/BAS and Risky Health Behaviors
Several theorists have suggested that impulsivity can be understood as a joint function of the behavioral approach (BAS) and behavioral inhibition systems (BIS). After resolving questions concerning the measurement of impulsivity and BAS, this study examined the relationships among risky health behaviors, impulsivity, BIS, and BAS. Utilizing a sample of undergraduates (N=904), a structural model was tested in which BAS and BIS predicted impulsivi…
On the Nature of Reactance and its Role in Persuasive Health Communication
Reactance theory might be profitably applied to understanding failures in persuasive health communication but for one drawback: The developer of the theory contends that reactance cannot be measured. Rejecting this position, this paper develops four alternative conceptual perspectives on the nature of reactance (i.e., combinations of cognition and affect), then provides an empirical test of each. Two parallel studies were conducted, one advocatin…
Increasing Political Sophistication Through Public Deliberation
Deliberative democratic theory posits that group deliberation aids the development of citizens' political sophistication. To test this general claim, the authors studied the association between participation in face-to-face political deliberation and subsequent changes in the coherence, integration, differentiation, and detail of participants' political beliefs. The authors measured these dependent variables using questionnaires administered befo…
Meta-analytic evidence for the persuasive effect of narratives on beliefs, attitudes, intentions, and behaviors
Although narratives are often credited with the capacity to change opinions, empirical tests of this prediction have produced mixed results. To provide a more precise test of narrative's effect on beliefs, attitudes, intentions, and behaviors, we performed meta-analyses on studies that evaluated narrative's persuasive influence on these outcomes. Results suggested positive relationships between exposure to a narrative and narrative-consistent bel…
Primary and secondary goals in the production of interpersonal influence messages
In this paper we argue that an individual's activities, prior to and during an interpersonal influence attempt, may be explained by his or her goals. Two classes of goals are posited: (1) primary or influence goals which instigate the influence process, and (2) secondary goals which shape it. Three studies are reported whose purpose was to illuminate the substance of each of these goals, to examine their relationships to one another, and finally,…
Sequential-Request Persuasive Strategies
Meta-analysis of the foot-in-the-door (FITD) and door-in-the-face (DITF) literatures showed both effects to be small (r = .17, .15 respectively), even under optimal conditions. Both require aprosocial topic in order to work. The amount of time between the first and second requests plays a different role in the operation of each of the two strategies. DITF was effective only when the delay between requests was brief. Effectiveness of FITD was unre…
Situational influences on the selection of compliance‐gaining messages
Recent work on the dimensions of compliance‐gaining situations offers an opportunity for systematizing a portion of message selection research. Two studies that utilize the six dimensions isolated by Cody and McLaughlin (1980), as well as one other, as predictors of compliance‐gaining message selection are reported. The first study relied on the hypothetical situation method typical of most compliance‐gaining research. Study 2 utilized a new meth…
Does Perceived Message Effectiveness Cause Persuasion or Vice Versa? 17 Consistent Answers
Can perceived message effectiveness (PE) be considered a cause of actual effectiveness (AE)? If so, PE judgments can be used as valid indicators of the persuasiveness of messages in the preimplementation phase of campaigns. In addition, manipulating PE may be a viable persuasive strategy. But, if the reverse causal sequence obtains (AE→PE), then the strategy would be ineffective and the utility of PE in formative campaign research meaningless. St…
Friendly or Unfriendly Persuasion
Expectancy theory suggests that people develop normative expectations about appropriateness of communication behavior that differ for males and females. Support was found for an interaction hypothesis predicting that males would be expected to use more verbally aggressive persuasive message strategies and would negatively violate expectations and be less persuasive when they deviated from such strategies. Moreover, females are expected to be less…
Influence, appraisals, and emotions in close relationships
Influence messages can be characterized along two dimensions: explicitness and dominance. These dimensions were cast as causally antecedent to cognitive appraisals which, in turn, were expected to shape emotional response. Two studies were conducted in which participants were asked to assume the role of message target and then view a video of an influence message. The first study made use of a gain‐assistance goal, and the second was constructed …
Types of Influence Goals in Personal Relationships
This study was designed to address three issues: (1) What types of influence goals do people see as typical in their close relationships? (2) How can these goals best be interpreted empirically and theoretically? (3) How do different types of influence goals correspond to action? Cluster analytic methods were applied to a sample of goals generated by people who were asked to recall their goal in an interpersonal influence event of their own initi…
Empathy, communication, and prosocial behavior
Two studies were conducted to examine the relationships among different dimensions of empathy, communication, and prosocial behavior. Study one provides a test of three models hypothesized to explain this process. Results of this study indicated support for altruism as a motivator of prosocial behavior and suggest that the egoism and dual‐process models are unlikely explanations. Study two was conducted in hopes of identifying additional support …
Structuring the concept of relational communication
Since the distinction was first drawn between content and relational aspects of communication, the notion of relational communication has evolved from a unitary focus on dominance to a multi‐faceted concept that embraces as many as 12 subcomponents. With the aim of devising a theoretical structure to these many concepts, we advanced three proposals. First, we distinguished intensifier variables, such as involvement, and substantive variables, suc…
Persuasion and the structure of affect. Dual systems and discrete emotions as complementary models
Politeness Judgments in Personal Relationships
Brown and Levinson's politeness theory specifies five strategies for achieving politeness. Although the strategies are presented as ordered and mutually exclusive, there is reason to believe that they are neither The authors offer an alternative means of classifying requests that is grounded in the phenomenology of the social actor and depends on three message features: explicitness, dominance, and argument. Separate samples of judges viewed vide…
Communication and Social Influence
Persuasion past and present
1993). Persuasion past and present: Attitudes aren't what they used to be. Communication Monographs: Vol. 60, Into the New Century, pp. 90-97
Close Relationships at Work
For a variety of reasons it is likely that romantic relationships between members of the same organization will become increasingly common. However, there exists very little information about persons' reasons for entering close relationships with other employees, how non-involved parties view the relationships, and what the outcome of such pairings might be for the host organization. Interviews were conducted with persons who had either observed …
Relational Judgments in an Influence Context
We contend that communication episodes tend to focus interactants’attention on one or the other of two relational judgments: dominance or affiliation. Further, when one judgment is relatively more salient, individuals will use the salient judgment as the basis for inferring other aspects of the relationship. To test that notion, a judgment study was conducted in which participants viewed a set of influence messages that varied in degree of domina…
Rethinkin the Study of Fear Appeals
A selective review of theories of fear appeals is carried out which concludes that these theories have gradually become divorced from the notion of fear. The forces that motivated that separation are examined and a set of arguments are advanced favoring a reunion of fear with a theory of fear appeals. As a means of achieving that union, emotion theory is reviewed and a set of axioms extracted. The axiomatic framework is then used to demonstrate h…
Compliance‐gaining message‐selection
Compliance‐gaining message‐selection researchers have generally adopted one of three approaches to the analysis of their data. The technique approach treats individual items as dependent variables. Analyses done with the strategy approach reduce those items to groups, usually through factor analysis, and then consider the groups as dependent variables. A third approach combines all of the selection items into a single scale on the assumption that…
Experiential and Physiological Responses to Interpersonal Influence
In this study, we examined the linkages between two important features of influence messages, explicitness and dominance, and emotional response. Two positions were considered. From politeness theory, we deduced that judgments of the politeness of the message would mediate the effects of message form on emotional response. Consideration of cognitive appraisal theories suggested judgments of goal blockage and legitimacy would assume the role of me…
Cultural and situational influences on the process of persuasive strategy selection
Conceptualizing Context in Message-Production Research
Journal Article Conceptualizing Context in Message-Production Research Get access James Price Dillard, James Price Dillard 1James Price Dillard is a professor and Denise Haunani Solomon is an associate professor of communication arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 2may be addressed to either author at Vilas Hall, Department of Communication Arts, University of Wisconsin, 821 University Avenue, Madison, WI 53706; e-mail; dsolomon@facstaff…
Self-Inference and the Foot-in-the-Door Technique Quantity of Behavior and Attitudinal Mediation
The purpose of this investigation was to test two aspects of the self-perception theory account of the foot-in-the-door (FITD) phenomenon. The first aspect tested was the claim that the greater the quantity of behavior associated with the initial request, the greater the likelihood of compliance with the later request. Quantity of behavior was operation-alized as (a) request size and (b) active versus passive execution, that is, whether the targe…
Threat Appeals as Multi-Emotion Messages
Communicator Competence in the Workplace
(1981). Communicator Competence in the Workplace: Model Testing and Scale Development. Annals of the International Communication Association: Vol. 5, Communication Yearbook 5, pp. 505-527
Cultural and situational influences on the process of persuasive strategy selection
Friendly or Unfriendly Persuasion
Expectancy theory suggests that people develop normative expectations about appropriateness of communication behavior that differ for males and females. Support was found for an interaction hypothesis predicting that males would be expected to use more verbally aggressive persuasive message strategies and would negatively violate expectations and be less persuasive when they deviated from such strategies. Moreover, females are expected to be less…
Global Impressions of Social Skills
(1984). Global Impressions of Social Skills: Behavioral Predictors. Annals of the International Communication Association: Vol. 8, Communication Yearbook 8, pp. 446-463
The Impact of Communication Context and Persuader Gender on Persuasive Message Selection
(1984). The Impact of Communication Context and Persuader Gender on Persuasive Message Selection. Women's Studies in Communication: Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 1-12
Sequential-Request Persuasive Strategies
Meta-analysis of the foot-in-the-door (FITD) and door-in-the-face (DITF) literatures showed both effects to be small (r = .17, .15 respectively), even under optimal conditions. Both require aprosocial topic in order to work. The amount of time between the first and second requests plays a different role in the operation of each of the two strategies. DITF was effective only when the delay between requests was brief. Effectiveness of FITD was unre…
Situational influences on the selection of compliance‐gaining messages
Recent work on the dimensions of compliance‐gaining situations offers an opportunity for systematizing a portion of message selection research. Two studies that utilize the six dimensions isolated by Cody and McLaughlin (1980), as well as one other, as predictors of compliance‐gaining message selection are reported. The first study relied on the hypothetical situation method typical of most compliance‐gaining research. Study 2 utilized a new meth…
Romantic Relationships at Work
Journal Article Romantic Relationships at Work: Organizational and Personal Influences Get access James P. Dillard, James P. Dillard 1James P. Dillard (Ph.D., Michigan State University, 1983) is assistant professor of communication at the University of Wisconsin, Madison Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Hal Witteman Hal Witteman 2Hal Witteman (M.A., West Virginia University, 1976) is a doctoral candidate in…
Close Relationships at Work
For a variety of reasons it is likely that romantic relationships between members of the same organization will become increasingly common. However, there exists very little information about persons' reasons for entering close relationships with other employees, how non-involved parties view the relationships, and what the outcome of such pairings might be for the host organization. Interviews were conducted with persons who had either observed …
Empathy, communication, and prosocial behavior
Two studies were conducted to examine the relationships among different dimensions of empathy, communication, and prosocial behavior. Study one provides a test of three models hypothesized to explain this process. Results of this study indicated support for altruism as a motivator of prosocial behavior and suggest that the egoism and dual‐process models are unlikely explanations. Study two was conducted in hopes of identifying additional support …
Compliance‐gaining message‐selection
Compliance‐gaining message‐selection researchers have generally adopted one of three approaches to the analysis of their data. The technique approach treats individual items as dependent variables. Analyses done with the strategy approach reduce those items to groups, usually through factor analysis, and then consider the groups as dependent variables. A third approach combines all of the selection items into a single scale on the assumption that…
Primary and secondary goals in the production of interpersonal influence messages
In this paper we argue that an individual's activities, prior to and during an interpersonal influence attempt, may be explained by his or her goals. Two classes of goals are posited: (1) primary or influence goals which instigate the influence process, and (2) secondary goals which shape it. Three studies are reported whose purpose was to illuminate the substance of each of these goals, to examine their relationships to one another, and finally,…
Types of Influence Goals in Personal Relationships
This study was designed to address three issues: (1) What types of influence goals do people see as typical in their close relationships? (2) How can these goals best be interpreted empirically and theoretically? (3) How do different types of influence goals correspond to action? Cluster analytic methods were applied to a sample of goals generated by people who were asked to recall their goal in an interpersonal influence event of their own initi…
Self-Inference and the Foot-in-the-Door Technique Quantity of Behavior and Attitudinal Mediation
The purpose of this investigation was to test two aspects of the self-perception theory account of the foot-in-the-door (FITD) phenomenon. The first aspect tested was the claim that the greater the quantity of behavior associated with the initial request, the greater the likelihood of compliance with the later request. Quantity of behavior was operation-alized as (a) request size and (b) active versus passive execution, that is, whether the targe…
The uses of meta‐analysis
Non)depressed persons’ cognitive and affective reactions to (un)successful interpersonal influence
Weiner's (1986) theory of attribution and affect was juxtaposed with the literature on depression in order to develop hypotheses about the attributional and emotional reactions of depressed and nondepressed persons to three different outcomes of an interpersonal interaction. An experiment was conducted in which depressed and nondepressed participants, who attempted to exert interpersonal influence, met with success, ambiguity, or failure. The res…
Seeking Compliance
Exploring the Affective Impact of Interpersonal Influence Messages
The principal reason for carrying out this study was to establish a relationship between the linguistic form of influence messages and their affective outcomes. A subordinate goal was to examine the impact of perceptions of legitimacy, a key feature of influence attempts, on affect. Eight directives, i.e. short strings of words intended to change the behaviour of a target person, were developed that varied in terms of explicitness and dominance. …
Epilogue
Persuasion past and present
1993). Persuasion past and present: Attitudes aren't what they used to be. Communication Monographs: Vol. 60, Into the New Century, pp. 90-97
Rethinkin the Study of Fear Appeals
A selective review of theories of fear appeals is carried out which concludes that these theories have gradually become divorced from the notion of fear. The forces that motivated that separation are examined and a set of arguments are advanced favoring a reunion of fear with a theory of fear appeals. As a means of achieving that union, emotion theory is reviewed and a set of axioms extracted. The axiomatic framework is then used to demonstrate h…
Experiential and Physiological Responses to Interpersonal Influence
In this study, we examined the linkages between two important features of influence messages, explicitness and dominance, and emotional response. Two positions were considered. From politeness theory, we deduced that judgments of the politeness of the message would mediate the effects of message form on emotional response. Consideration of cognitive appraisal theories suggested judgments of goal blockage and legitimacy would assume the role of me…
Communication and Social Influence
Relational Judgments in an Influence Context
We contend that communication episodes tend to focus interactants’attention on one or the other of two relational judgments: dominance or affiliation. Further, when one judgment is relatively more salient, individuals will use the salient judgment as the basis for inferring other aspects of the relationship. To test that notion, a judgment study was conducted in which participants viewed a set of influence messages that varied in degree of domina…
The Multiple Affective Outcomes of Aids PSAs
The widespread use of fear appeals in health communication campaigns seems to reflect the existence of a folk theory that predicts message acceptance as a function of induced fright. Whereas there is empirical evidence consistent with that position, recent research also shows that other affects may influence message acceptance as well. Two studies were conducted to determine the extent to which a sample of public service announcements (PSAs) on t…
Psychology (63 works) · Social Psychology (52 works) · Social Psychology (36 works) · Persuasion (24 works) · Behavioral Health and Interventions (20 works) · Computer Science (17 works) · Media Influence and Health (17 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Interpersonal communication (13 works) · Communication in Education and Healthcare (12 works)